Facebook Will Promote News Stories Over Viral Content

Facebook announced plans to increase the amount of news content shared on their site on Monday, given reports that news sites gained a lot of traffic by posting their stories on the social media platform. The site says it will begin posting “high quality content” more prominently on users’ News Feeds and lessening the prominence of memes and viral photos.

“Our surveys show that on average people prefer links to high quality articles about current events, their favorite sports team or shared interests, to the latest meme,” the news release reads. “Starting soon, we’ll be doing a better job of distinguishing between a high quality article on a website versus a meme photo hosted somewhere other than Facebook when people click on those stories on mobile.” The site will also begin posting links to relevant articles shared and clicked on from the site and reposting stories when new comments…